17 new deacons to be ordained by Chicago Archdiocese
Editor's note: This story has been corrected to note that Holy Name Cathedral is located at State and Superior streets in Chicago.
Seventeen new deacons are set to be ordained by Cardinal Blase Cupich on Sunday, with a number of them assigned to begin work at suburban parishes.
A number of new permanent deacons are headed to Spanish-speaking missions in the suburbs, a move, in part, that reflects the suburbs' growing Hispanic population, spokeswoman Colleen Tunney Ryan said
This year, the Archdiocese of Chicago is combining its three types of deacon ordinations instead of holding them separately as was done in the past, Ryan said. The archdiocese oversees nearly 350 parishes in Cook and Lake counties.
Deacons, men who perform church ministries but are not considered priests, can perform duties such as officiating weddings and baptisms, distributing Communion and preaching homilies. Permanent deacons are individuals who can be married and choose not to train for the priesthood, while transitional deacons consider the job a step on their way to becoming priests.
Typically, archdiocese officials said, permanent deacons are assigned to home parishes. The following assignments have been given to this year's deacon candidates, and their wives:
• Salvador and Martha Medina - Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Des Plaines
• Jaime and Leonor Rojas - St. Nicholas Parish, Evanston
• Héctor and Marisela Soto - Misión St. Juan Diego, Arlington Heights
• Raúl and Argelia Trejo - St. Colette Parish, Rolling Meadows
• Robert and Chiyuki Birck - St. Paul the Apostle, Gurnee
• Thomas Gaida - National Shrine of St. Maximilian Kolbe-Marytown, Libertyville
• Christian Shiu - Most Blessed Trinity, Waukegan
The ordination Mass will be at 10 a.m. Sunday at the Holy Name Cathedral at State and Superior streets in downtown Chicago.